At La Gran Via Bakery, in Jackson Heights, only the smile of co-owner Betsy Leites outshines the show-stopping display. When it's time for coffee, Betsy pulls a potent cortadito, too. Read more on Culinary Backstreets.

From daytime through dinnertime, more than a dozen Ecuadorian carts and trucks do business at the eastern edge of Jackson Heights, near the Junction Blvd. station of the 7 train. By night, many have yielded their places to Mexican street-food vendors (I've never witnessed the shift change). During one recent excursion, at least three Mexican vendors featured tacos al pastor; the pork for these was sliced from the busiest trompo.

The comically fat wad of napkins that accompanied my perro con huevos de codorníz, a quail-egg-topped Colombian hot dog with bacon, pineapple, and crushed potato chips, seemed very prudent very quickly. Thanks to a quartet of sauces — ketchup, pink sauce, mayo, and mustard — the eggs slid this way and that, even as the chips affixed themselves to my fingers. The "super hamburguesa" at this tiny, family-run business, I also noted, sports not two eggs, but three.

Moments earlier, this takeaway container held several skewers of anticuchos — slices of marinated, grilled beef heart. If I had tarried much longer, I would have been left with little more than the boiled papas in back. Even for meat-and-potato lovers, first things first.

"Bharta" (Bur-tuh), however it might be transliterated from Bengali script, almost always refers to some sort of "mashed" Bangladeshi dish. At restaurants they are generally prepared in advance, displayed behind glass, and doled out in small portions; the flavors are potent.

At this street cart, the name is "vorta." Fuska House offers three varieties, made to order, featuring mango, peara (that is, guava), or a mix of the two, shown here. For these raw-fruit vortas, no mashing is involved — just slicing, seasoning, serving, and ultimately finger-licking.

Cuenca, a city in Ecuador's southern highlands, owes its greatest culinary fame to the Lenten soup fanesca, but mote pillo (Moh-tay Pee-yo) might run a close second. This breakfast favorite consists of eggs scrambled with hominy in the presence of onion, garlic, and cilantro; in my experience mote pillo is quite mild without the intervention of hot sauce. Also shown below, from the same Christmastime visit: a "toro Navideño."

From a previous holiday season: Literally a "bread baby," Ecuador's guagua de pan is a sweet bread prepared in anticipation of Día de los Difuntos. This "Day of the Deceased," observed throughout the Andes on November 2, is less well-known in the United States than Día de Muertos, the Mexican "Day of the Dead." However, the holiday bread itself, compared with Mexico's pan de muerto, is often more elaborately decorated. My guagua de pan, in Ecuadorian yellow, blue, and red, was a modest example. A hot spiced purplish beverage called colada morada is the traditional pairing; reportedly, dunking is encouraged.

True, this autumn Nepali Bhanchha Ghar (Bahn-sah Gar) celebrated another victory in New York City's annual Momo Crawl. Without fanfare, however, on a typical morning you're more likely to find owner Yamuna Shrestha preparing sukhi roti, a flatbread that she herself rolls out, griddles, and then briefly touches, top and bottom, to an open flame. Read more about this "home kitchen" for the food of Nepal on Culinary Backstreets.

When in Queens, ask for helado (eh-Lah-doe) and you might get ice cream, but that common translation from the Spanish — literally, the name means "frozen" — also embraces housemade ice pops. My milk ice, from this Colombian bakery-restaurant, was an helado de chicle (Chee-clay), which I had hoped, perhaps unreasonably, might offer some of the chewiness and elastic consistency of certain Middle Eastern ice creams. Instead it sported the color and flavor, but not the texture, of bubble gum; the payload at the bottom seemed to have been a pair of malted-milk balls. Next time: helado de mango biche.